The future of the QC lab and its LIMS

Two big shifts in the focus of Lab informatics software are posing a challenge for the pharma industry. The first shift is due to the rise of the web and cloud-based services and their consequences regarding data management. The second axe of transformation is the increasing interest in process-analytic quality assurance as opposed to the end-product quality control that was predominant in the past.

This was one of the conclusions reached during the Paperless Lab Academy held in Amsterdam in 2014, as Tom Wilkie reports in his third Scientific Computing World article entitled "Is the end of the QC lab and its LIMS in sight?".

Laboratory management: from quality control to quality assurance

As the aforementioned article explains, the consequences of the current shift from end-of-line quality control to in-line quality assurance are important, both for the laboratory and for the vendors of lab informatics software. Jan Verelst from Siemens conveyed these implications through an eloquent question addressed to the Paperless Lab Academy audience: ‘Do we need to stay with the traditional QC laboratory?’.